Along with the traditional wire rack, the toaster came with an enamel broiling rack, an enamel baking pan, and a nonstick pizza pan. The remarkable quality of material and craftsmanship is in the cuisinart toa60 price tag. As demonstrated by the Breville’s price tag, these luxuries come at a price. I also tried air frying frozen breaded fish fillets which is usually my preferred way of cooking these.
Breville has also updated the model we reviewed and now has 12 instead of 10 programmed functions. The Cuisinart ups the number of functions to 15, including a “speed convection” function and an innovative “dual cook” function. The dual cook function allows you to program two modes of cooking — for example, slow-cooking followed by browning — for two different times. In addition, with a new technology developed by Breville called Element IQ, there are five independent heating elements that are controlled to accommodate whatever you are cooking.
It’s digital, so there are 10 programmed settings of time and temperature for a variety of foods, all of which can be adjusted depending on your recipe or packaging instructions. For example, the Pizza function is set at 350°F for 30 minutes, and we adjusted it to 450°F. The Pizza function uses convection, and the pizza was done in 13 minutes.
Nevertheless, I stuck to the recipe and cooked it on convection bake without preheating for 25 minutes at 400oF, turning it down to 350oF for the final 20 minutes. I made the pizza directly on the baking tray, making sure it was well oiled, pushing the dough right up to the edges of the tray. The pizza was cooked in just eight minutes, with a light and airy base, crisp crust, and golden cheese. When the timer went off, the fries were still a bit hard inside and the tops were way more brown than the bottoms, so I turned them and put them back in for an extra five minutes. I used two bone-in and skin-on chicken breasts — seasoned only with salt — to try out the roasting function. To achieve success the meat should be tender with an internal temperature of 165 degrees F and the skin golden and crispy within 40 minutes.
The quality of materials is lacking, which is evident in how easily it can scratch, but this has no effect on its performance. The Breville – BOV845BSS Smart Oven Pro proved to be the superior choice in almost every way. We say “almost every way” because when we tested the toasting function, the toast produced uneven shading after three minutes, which was the median toasting time among our finalists. While both sides were identical (sans grate marks), the toast got gradually darker towards the top. However, since most of the toaster ovens yielded the same results, we would recommend a slot toaster for optimal toast.
Both air fryers have digital controls with easily-adjustable temperature settings. These temperatures range from 175°F to 450°F, depending on your desired level of crispiness. You can select these settings manually or use one of each model’s preset options for frying, grilling, and roasting. Both models also feature an auto-shutoff function that turns off their heating elements after a predetermined amount of time has passed. For people who plan on using their toaster ovens to reheat or cook single servings of food, a small toaster oven that can accommodate four slices of bread or a 9-inch pizza will suffice.
In this update, both the Cuisinart and KitchenAid performed similarly, although the pizza crust that was cooked in the KitchenAid was somewhat flabby. We used the preprogrammed pizza function on the Breville, Oster, Waring, and Panasonic and the two new models, the Cuisinart – Chef’s Convection and the KitchenAid – KCO211BM. For the toaster ovens that did not have a pizza function, we used their bake function and preheated them to 400°F as the pizza packaging instructed. While the cooking times varied, the cooking results of all of our finalists were nearly identical.
While there’s no child safety lock, the oven does stop working if you open the door. However, as with any oven, always keep an eye on small children in the kitchen. The chicken came out perfectly cooked, with the juices running clear and an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit when tested with a food thermometer.
After drooling over several of the recipes included in the product manual, I landed on blueberry muffins – a classic. The recipe makes six muffins and as such advises using a six cup muffin tin. But by this point I had all the ingredients out and my heart was set on blueberry muffins. So I mixed up the batter anyway and decided to split it between six paper muffin cases which I placed on the baking tray. The stainless steel baking pan and air frying basket are easy to clean.
But for households with a lot of mouths to feed, the capacity will probably not be enough for the number of portions you’ll want to cook. With useful features like an interior light, nonstick interior, and auto-eject rack, it is also the most impressive toaster oven without convection cooking. With 7 different cooking functions to choose from, it’s so much more than an air fryer.